Thursday, October 18, 2007

Green tips

Following on with the theme from yesterday:

After reading my post for yesterday, Benjamin pointed out that if there were only half as many people on the planet, everyone could live like us (needing two Earths). He did not have any practical solution (apart from global pandemic) for how to reduce the population, favoring the idea that everyone have only one child per family. Since I don't think the pandemic is realistic (or desirable), and I think it will be awfully hard to get everyone on Earth to agree not to over procreate, we will just have to work on other ways of saving our planet.

On a more basic level, don't use plastic shopping bags. Canvas or other reusable bags are available in most grocery stores for very little these days, and if you get one or two, stick them in a dark closet and they will multiply like rabbits. It's true - we started out with just a couple and now have 10 or 11...If you use the plastic bags for trash or animal waste, you can get a few, but do you really need the hundreds that come from one shopping trip?

Replace all your lights with compact fluorescent light bulbs. These do need to be specially recycled when they burn out, but they don't burn out for a very long time. You can get the equivalent amount of light as a 100 watt bulb, for only 15 watts!

Recycle. Everything you can. Try freecycling - this is where you trade or give away items you don't want to people who agree to use them, repair the items, whatever. Google the term for more information.

Feel free to add your own ideas in the comments section!

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